One of the main objectives of feminism is the abolition of gender roles. Gender roles hurt everyone. Gender roles imprison and oppress everyone. Men, and women and others are all affected. Everyone is squished into the round hole, even if they are a square peg. Those who conform to the binary are trapped; everyone else is erased.
Toxic masculinity has its roots in misogyny. As with all bigotry, some of this is overt, and some is subtle. Toxic masculinity manifests in ways that make it clear everything not masculine is automatically feminine and You Do Not Want THAT! The worst thing to be is feminine! This notion is sickness. A blight on society.
A lot of homophobia is born from toxic masculinity. I am particularly sensitive to this having unwittingly married a gay man. Toxic masculinity and homophobia ingrained by hyper-religious relatives led him down this unfortunate path. When I met him, he had a lot of ideas stemming from machismo and homophobia. We were friends, and through many discussions he came around. He became an activist for gay rights amd feminism. I saw him freeing himself. I saw him open up socially, and bloom. He wasn't afraid of his Kim Possible fan-art and fan fiction (editing his really compelling stories for him was what first bonded us). He wasn't afraid of his softness, and he trusted me with it.
Every time he saw his parents, he was inundated with homophobic messages, and the need to prove masculinity and heteronormative values was reinforced. So he married a woman who let him be most like himself. He buried anything related to homosexuality. Gayness, you know, especially in a man, has GOT to be feminine, and how dare a man taint himself with the plague of femininity!
The problem with lesbians? Well, they taint everything pure and good about manhood, right, and need to just stay in their inferior, feminine lane. Clearly not my perspective, but how I interpret my observations of bigots.
I have another friend. We used to bump heads a lot. Once, in the middle of an argument in which he was advancing ideas using black supremacist bigotry and pseudo-intellectual readings in support of that bigotry, and I was supporting my ideas with proven or well-supported scientific discoveries, concepts, and theories to which he objected because the men I quoted were all white (and we were talking about food, y'all and agriculture) this man actually exclaimed, "Where is a woman who will listen to a man?!"
I hung up on him and never intended to speak to him again. After ignoring several calls and texts, I wrote back that I had listened to him, and I would believe him the second he sounded correct. Then I blocked him for several days. I unblocked him out of curiosity, and an apology came through. We revisited the discussion with humor, and though neither of us changed our minds about whether or not modern cruciferous vegetables were to be avoided like any other devil, we came to agree that neither of us was completely wrong, that I would never cause him to eat cauliflower, and that disagreeing with him doesn't mean I'm disrespecting him, even if I am a woman.
Over the years, I have observed a mellowing of his rigidity, and a willingness not only to hear my ideas, but also to seek them out, and change his mind when I am more right than he is. He wants to learn from me, and he wants to teach me. He is capable of being a friend to me now. Initially, he was not. We have a lovely friendship of affection, humor, edification and exchange. Toxic masculinity could have robbed us both of this.
Is he still struggling under the thumb of toxic masculinity? Yes. He loves me, but never tells me. He just does love. It would be nice if he could sometimes speak it. Sober. Once, he was completely tripped out on psychedelics someone dosed him with. Over the phone, for four hours, I struggled to keep him grounded and inside his house. He told me he loves me, and I told him I love him, and he then told me several anecdotes from his formative years that created his understanding of what love is and does. Then my dumb ass had to remember I wanted to dig up some baby pine trees and offer them to him. He went outside in the dark to dig five holes for them with his fingers, absolutely manic again.
Now, even if he has just done a very sincere, loving thing for me, if I tell him I love him, he says he appreciates me. He thanks me. He gives me a long hug, and a sweet kiss. He cannot say the words. To my observation, neither can his brothers.
He introduced a man to me as his oldest and closest friend. As he left, the friend gave him a dap, pulled him into a hug, and said, "I love you, Blood, stay up, and be blessed." His response? "Thanks! Yeah, Cuz, you too!" He cannot say the words. But he took a knifing for that guy once. Right in the kidney. That he'll do, and would do again, no hesitation.
If that isn't toxic masculinity, I do not know what is.